The singers were chosen from a pool of more than 400 applicants from 50 countries. The search began last September and since then three rounds of auditions have taken place.

12 singers from the hundreds of applicants were invited to audition on the main stage at Covent Garden, where they sang in front of a panel including Music Director of The Royal Opera, Antonio Pappano and Director of Opera, Kasper Holten.

The Jette Parker Young Artists Programme supports the artistic development of young professional singers, conductors, directors and répétiteurs at the start of their careers. During their two-year placement, Young Artists work on productions for The Royal Opera singing small roles, covering larger roles or joining the music or directing staff.

Audiences are invited to Meet the Young Artists Weekat the start of each Season — a chance to meet the new intake and hear them perform with those continuing for their second Season.

I would also be very grateful if you could take part in our little survey included in the enews about your most recent booking experience. Your view is going to assist us in planning any future website development.

The Spring Season issue of the Royal Opera House magazine is on its way to you. While the ballet casting is not included in the magazine, I am very pleased to include a link to Principal casting here.

There are no ticket limits for any of the performances on the main stage. For more information please see the Friends’ page on the website. To access this page, sign-in and then click on your name.

You may have already received this year’s Pointe Shoes Appeal signed by Lauren Cuthbertson, which this year gives you the opportunity to write a personal message. All of our sparkling pointe shoe messages will be hung on our Christmas tree in the Paul Hamlyn Hall.

As always, I would like to stress how grateful we all are for your support as a Friend. We could not do it without you!

We are well into the Summer Season, with Guillaume Tell sets being tried out on stage and the artists rehearsing with Antonio Pappano. It is a long time since we’ve heard this work at Covent Garden and it sounds really exciting.

We’ve been delighted by the reception that The Royal Ballet have received on their tour of the USA so far, from critics and ballet-lovers alike and the support extended by American Friends of Covent Garden. You can see a summary of press articles and comments from social media here. The Company is now in Chicago on the second leg of the visit, and will visit New York later in the month.

Those of you who like to book stalls circle standing places will have noticed that these are not available for Orphée et Eurydice. This is due to an unusual configuration of the auditorium for this production, which includes standing places being added to the orchestra pit. Regulations governing numbers in the main auditorium mean that we have had to remove stalls circle standing places to balance numbers. The places in the pit are quite different from our usual standing places: there is nothing to lean against, and the closeness to the stage means that the experience will be more like that in the arena at the BBC Proms. These places will be available to ROH Students when booking opens next month.

Another more general change across the Season is an alteration to the number of day tickets we make available for main-stage productions. We rarely find that these sell out to the morning queue and wish to ensure that our tickets have the best possible chance of being used by customers. By reducing the number of day tickets from the current 67 to 44 we are optimistic that we can balance the opportunity for people to book on the day with our responsibility to have as close to a full house as possible.

On stage at the moment, Don Giovanni continues to seduce us all in Kasper Holten’s handsome production. If you have friends who have yet to experience an opera, you may wish to alert them to the free, outdoor BP Big Screens we are relaying Don Giovanni to on 3 July 2015. We are hoping for the same sort of lovely soft summer evening that we had for our very successful screening of La bohème.

Last but certainly not least, Ambrogio Maestri is repeating his signature role of Falstaff in Robert Carsen’s very funny production set in 1950s Britain. If you missed this gem the first time around don’t let it get away in the revival – it’s tremendous fun.

This month we are extremely lucky in having two classics on the main stage at the same time as a brand new ballet. La traviata opens on Monday 18 May with two artists who have not as yet received their fair amount of applause sharing the role of Violetta: Marina Rebeka and Sonya Yoncheva. I was lucky enough to see Marina Rebeka on stage a couple of years ago and I’ve profiled her here.

The final revival of John Copley's classic production of La bohème does not need any introduction. This iconic staging has been entertaining us for over forty years and it is time to say goodbye. It will be very emotional for many of us and there will be lots of opportunities for you to share your memories of seeing it over the years on our website and social networks. Watch out for galleries of previous performances featuring the greats of opera from the past 41 years, and material from a very special In Conversation event with director John Copley, which we are working on at the moment.

In the meantime, we still have the revival of Don Giovanni coming up next month. I’m particularly excited to hear Alain Altinoglu make his Royal Opera House debut as conductor. Further into the future we will hear Antonio Pappano give his acclaimed interpretation of Guillaume Tell during a new production from rising star Damiano Michieletto. We have just created a new trailer to give a flavor of the production and you can see a preview of it here:

I wanted to make sure that you were aware of the Open Up section on our website. This will be the hub for all information about the project, and will provide regular updates on any disruption due to building works – do bookmark it and check before your visits during the 2015/16 Season.

As ever, we very much welcome any feedback, so do leave comments below, or get in touch with the Friends office.

Thank you to everyone who has given us feedback on the early opening of the priority booking. While we appreciate that no time will suit everyone, the majority of the Friends welcomed the early start. The most appealing factor was the speed and absence of problems.

Taking this feedback into account, as well as the results of a similar trial for general booking last month, we have decided to open priority booking for all levels of Friends at 9am from now on. Telephone booking remains unchanged and will open at 10am.

If you don't feel confident booking online, my team and I will be very willing to assist you. If you prefer to book by phone, we will have an allocation of tickets available based on the percentage of Friends who book in this way.

The Season Guide and Autumn Magazine are now on the way to you. I hope that you will find our 2015/16 programme exciting. While the magazine is listing autumn performances, there are still many wonderful performances to enjoy during 2014/15: Król Roger is in rehearsal and the revival of Il turco in Italia is making many of us laugh. Something else that brightens everyone's mood is at the top of the page - it's always lovely to see Peregrine, the equine star of La Fille mal gardée back at the Royal Opera House!

And last but not least, many thanks again for your support. Please do continue giving us your feedback, we like to hear from you.

I would like to thank everyone for helping us with the recent trial of opening online booking at 8am. I very much appreciate that the change may not have suited everyone, however judging from the level and speed of booking it worked for most. Following this trial, we plan to do the same for general booking, which opens on 31 March. Once we are certain that the system is fully stabilized we would like to continue with the early booking for the Autumn Season. We will confirm the exact time in April.

The Season Guide and autumn magazine have now gone to print, so the time of booking is not included in their pages. However, once the booking time is confirmed you will be able to see it on our website, under the Friends’ page, and we will also include this important information in our enews. We also have not been able to include the casting for ballet performances. Again, the information will be available on our website ahead of autumn booking for all levels of support.

The Summer Season is full of wonderful productions, and it is not too late to purchase tickets for Guillaume Tell, Falstaff, Don Giovanni and others. If you would like to bring younger members of your family to a show, I would recommend the Welsh National Opera production of Peter Pan, taking place on 24 and 25 July. It will be a magical adventure for everyone aged eight and above.

Applications are now open for the third year of the ROH Links scheme, a skills sharing and capacity building programme offered to small and medium-sized performing arts organizations across the UK.

Three organizations are invited to join the programme each year for a period of up to two years. During this time, they are assigned an ROH Partner from within the ROH Executive Team to discuss their strengths and development needs. Support is also provided in the form of 1:1 meetings with senior ROH staff, shadowing opportunities, site visits and conference calls for up to 20 hours per year combined.

'Taking on ROH advice, we launched a new individual giving scheme in spring 2014 and we are now exceeding our fundraising targets in this area', says Alison Porter, General Manager of Mahogany Opera Group, who joined the programme in 2012/13.

The programme is open to professional opera, theatre, ballet or dance organizations, orchestras, choirs, arts venues, digital companies, and learning and participation organizations in the arts sector, from any geographical or community background.

The Costume Centre, which is due to open in 2015, will house more than 20,000 costumes for opera and ballet productions currently in repertory, as well as the Royal Opera House archive collection, which includes around six thousand items that date back to the 19th century.

Currently, Royal Opera House costumes are kept in locations across the UK, including Aberdare and Dover; the new centre in Thurrock will hugely reduce the carbon footprint of transporting costumes, as well as allowing for more efficient management and preservation of costumes still in use. The centre will also provide permanent workrooms for students, in partnership with South Essex College, and offer specialist placements with the Royal Opera House Costume Department.

‘With the completion of the Costume Centre, there will be outstanding facilities for costume production and training, as well as for historic costumes and the running costume stock of the Royal Opera House all on site,’ says Matt Lane, Head of ROH Thurrock and Thames Gateway. ‘We know that these incredible materials and spaces will inspire visitors, excite learners and offer new opportunities for even more people to engage with the creative industries’.

‘It's great to see the next site development getting underway. Businesses and learners alike feel inspired by the Park already, and they can't wait for the new centre to open its doors in 2015,’ says Andrea Stark, Chief Executive of the High House Production Park.

‘The new Costume Centre will be an exemplar in low carbon design,’ says Andrea. ‘In addition, alongside this building project, the Royal Opera House is running an innovative low carbon programme called Culture Change. This is helping many small companies and freelancers in our sector to increase their resilience by learning how to reduce their carbon footprint and improve their bottom line.’

To find out more about our work in Thurrock or join us for a tour of the Production workshop, visit our website.

The transformation of the Paul Hamlyn Hall into a beautiful seated dinner space in only 23 minutes (the length of Act III) set a new record for tight turnarounds and involved many teams from across the Royal Opera House including Royal Opera House Restaurants, the Linbury Theatre technical team, MITIE, Development and House Management.

Dinner guests enjoyed a delicious three-course meal by Royal Opera House Restaurants alongside The Winter’s Tale cast and artistic team and members of The Royal Ballet

The Winter’s Tale first night celebration was one of a variety of fundraising events that have been held this Season in aid of The Royal Opera House Foundation, the registered charity that supports every aspect of the Royal Opera House’s work: its achievements onstage, the commissioning of new works, development for talented emerging artists and craftspeople and extensive learning and engagement activity.

Our next and final fundraising event of the Season will be on 17 June to celebrate the opening night of Manon Lescaut. Contact our Development team to find out more about this event: ring +44 (0)20 7212 9356 or email yolanda.sze@roh.org.uk.

As part of the Culture Change programme, environmental charity Julie’s Bicycle is offering free bespoke one-to-one support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the East of England. This free support, which is available until March 2015, will help businesses to use and understand IG Tools (Industry Green Tools), and to learn sustainable business practices.

IG Tools, created by Julie’s Bicycle specifically for use across all creative and cultural sectors, are a set of carbon calculator tools that accurately measure a businesses’ environmental impact. Designed to take measurements from a variety of activity, including touring and festivals, the IG tools help to pinpoint environmental impact points and so create sustainable management strategies.

SMEs in the East of England can receive support in learning their way around these tools with the assistance of a dedicated environmental advisor from Julie’s Bicycle, ensuring that they can:

Collect relevant data on their activities;

Measure their carbon footprint;

Identify key areas of environmental impact and associated costs;

Develop targeted actions to reduce these impacts and costs;

Track their progress over time.

The advisers will also help businesses to:

Improve their environmental know-how;

Develop a business case for environmental action;

Develop and implement an environmental policy and action plan;

Address specific environmental actions around areas including design, production, office, and business travel;

Julie's Bicycle is an environmental charity dedicated to making environmental sustainability intrinsic to the business, art and ethics of the creative industries. It is currently working with over 1,000 creative businesses in the UK and internationally, using the latest tools and resources to support sustainable business growth.